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Art Talk with Zakir Hussain

Audio Tabs

Zakir Hussain: Tabla is one of the youngest inductees into the Indian classical music world, it's only about, oh, about 300 years old. But in that 300 years, it has become the premier rhythm instrument of choice.

Adam Kampe: That was 1999 NEA National Heritage Fellow and master tabla drummer, Zakir Hussain Allarakha Qureshi. Born into a musical household in Mumbai, India, he was practically destined to play the tabla. His father, the legendary drummer, Allarahka, not only practiced in the house, he taught classes there, giving Zakir a percussive soundtrack to his childhood. In fact, the exposure to music began at a very young age for little Zakir.

Zakir Hussain: For me as a child, when I was brought home from the hospital, my father's routine was to hold me in his arm and sing rhythms in my ear, I mean obviously he felt that he needed to at least get this information inside of my brain. So by the time I was three years old, I was already kind of aware of this stuff which was in my head and I knew that it was important subconsciously and had no idea what I was going to do with it. But his students, after he had injected all the stuff inside my head, he just turned me over to his students, it wasn't like he was going to force me to practice and learn and maybe turn me away from doing this, it was more like, "Okay, now you find your way."

When you are in a musician's house, in a music family where music is constantly heard through the day, there are students practicing in one side there is a record being played at another side, there is music being discussed between maestros in one point or somewhere and if you are a child circulating in a house, at any point you're listening through the right ear a tabla playing, through the left ear a raga being explained or a rhythmic pattern being analyzed and so on and on. So this happens quite regularly.

By the time I was seven, I was already playing a bit for having spent time with his students, so he came to my school performance, my dad and he saw me play and that night when we were home and having dinner and stuff, he asked me, "So do you want to learn this seriously?" And at that point, it dawned on me that I didn't want to do anything else but this, school was secondary, friends were secondary, playing sports with them on the beach or anywhere was secondary, this is what I wanted to do. So I said to him, "I want to learn, I want to seriously study this." I was seven, I had no clue what I was getting into. And so he said, "Okay, from tomorrow we'll start learning." And I said, "Okay," and tomorrow started at two-thirty in the morning, he woke me up and sat me down in the porch balcony and while the world slept, he talked to me about rhythms, about tabla, about tradition, about masters and the reverence that is required, the respect that is needed and all that stuff. For the next three and a half years or so, this became a routine. Then I'd go to a Muslim madrassa at six-thirty, quarter to seven and read the Quran and learn that. And after an hour of that, I'd walk across the street to St. Michael's High School to the church where we would sing the hymns in the morning and then march to our classrooms and then we'd do the school and then I'd come back home and put into practice what had been drilled into my brain between two-thirty and six in the morning and so that was the routine that I followed from the age of seven onwards.

Adam Kampe: I'm curious, do you see anything when you play, what does it feel like when you play?

Zakir Hussain: I think most musicians have a visual experience when they're performing, whether it's a drummer, a jazz drummer or a rock drummer or a horn player or a singer or a tabla player or a sitar player, you will find them either eyes closed or actually looking up like there's some transmission coming down from the skies or something. It's a very visual thing along with the audio experience that they are having, they are seeing shapes and they are seeing colors and they are seeing a flight, whether they are themselves flying as birds or running as horses or swimming as a fish, all those things are actually happening, it happens in western classical musical as well. So I think musicians who are spontaneously creative or that create a form of music, whether that's jazz, Indian music, Arabic music with the maqams, these musicians as they go along on stage are re-experiencing their moment with nature on stage.

Dancing on One Foot up, under

Zakir Hussain: For instance, when I first played with Charles Lloyd, I was thinking traditional India tabla and I was going to play with Charles and the maestro, I call him the master because he is, so I called him up and I said, "Master, you want me to bring some particularly tuned tablas?" because the tonic high drum is tuned to pitches, "Because I don't know what you are planning to do." And we were playing at the Grace Cathedral, San Francisco, a duo called Sacred Space or something. So I called him and he said, "Son, just tune your drums to the key of the universe," that's what he said, "key of the universe."

Zakir Hussain: What it meant to me was, we're going to walk the path that we've never walked before and we're going to hold each other's hands and we're going to point things out to each other of wonder and have fun with it, let's not pre destine ourselves. It was an interesting thing about music, so the spontaneity, the moment and to extract the most out of that moment rather than already decide what that moment is going to be and then only see that, you're not looking at other shades that the moment provides.

Adam Kampe: Before I forget to bring up another NEA Jazz Master, Pharoah Sanders.

Zakir Hussain: Well the way I see it, Charles is like a moving, breathing alive picture of divinity. Pharoah Sanders is more like similar but more a force of divinity, more a storm as opposed to a drizzle, more a hurricane as opposed to a fresh breeze just going by.

The Bird Song up

He's got a spirit that he reminds me of the Afro-Cuban Chango, orisha or shaman. That spirit, that does not adhere to the social norms and it will not sit back and allow you to in any way police its gushes that have to happen. Pharoah is that energy and it's a very special energy.

Sangam under

The day one I came into this Earth, my father took me in his arms, started singing rhythms in my ear, I started learning and when I leave this world, I'll still be a student because every day you learn. So people like Master Lloyd or whether it's John McLaughlin or it's Chick Corea or Herbie Hancock or Yo-Yo Ma or Itzhak Perlman, I mean you name it, and all these great masters, they're on a quest of learning. I mean I found that to be true recently when I worked with Bela Fleck and Edgar Meyer….

Cadence up

… when we got together in Boulder, Colorado for our first meeting to do something together, they just started shooting questions at me, "So, what is this? I heard you do this in a recording, can you explain, what is this?" And I'm looking at them, I'm saying, "Here are two of the greatest musicians of their music and they want me to teach tell them, or teach them something," it just was strange. When I first met John McLaughlin, the reason I met him was because he came to study with me, he was already the great Mahavishnu Orchestra leader and one of the most successful musicians around but he wanted to learn more about Indian music. So somebody told him that there's this guy who is teaching a class in New York somewhere and he found his way there. So this is all about learning, this is part that would never end, it's a horizon that you will never reach, the best will never arrive, but whatever you could do, the best you could do that evening or that day is obviously there and then you build upon it and it's just a stepping stone to the next level.

Special thanks to Dennis McNally, Antonia Minnecola, and of course Zakir Hussain.

To learn more in the music credits, check out the music credits in the transcript.

For the National Endowment for the Arts, I’m Adam Kampe.

Music Credits.

Excerpt of Tabla Duet in Tintal from Tabla Duet performed by Zakir Hussain and his father, Ustad Allarahka, used courtesy of Moment Records and by permission of Precious Time (ASCAP).

Excerpt of Jai Taal composed and performed by Zakir Hussain from The Best of Zakir Hussain, used courtesy of India Music Today/Living Media and by permission of Precious Time (ASCAP).

Excerpt of Dancing on One Foot and Sangam from Sangam, composed by Charles Lloyd and performed by Zakir Hussain, Eric Garland, and Charles Lloyd, used courtesy of ECM Records and used by permission of Forest Farm Music (BMI).

Excerpt of The Bird Song by Pharoah Sanders from

Excerpt of Cadence and The Melody of Rhythm Movement by Bela Fleck, Edgar Meyer, and Zakir Hussain from The Melody of Rhythm, used courtesy of E1 Entertainment and by permission of Precious Time (ascap) and Eggbert Music c/o Boosey Hawkes and Fleck Music c/o BMG Chrysalis [BMI].